Halfway through the laps of the 2014 circuit, Audi and Mercedes are gaining on race leader BMW and all three companies are exceeding sales expectations halfway through the year.
Mercedes' lineup was reportedly gaining the favor of investors, while Audi was focusing on attracting younger buyers with the hope young adults would develop a lifetime of loyalty to the automaker and its products.
But while Mercedes has been more focused on expanding its profit margins than moving up in the rankings of luxury vehicles sold, Kristina Church, a Barclays analyst, stated investor attraction to Mercedes could fade over the long haul, because the automaker has to retool its lineup to meet the the European Union's incoming emissions regulations by 2020.
Mercedes' efforts to meeting EU's standards by 2020 will allot time for BMW to update the heart of its model line, according to Church who said BMW has "future-proofed" itself by proactively addressing the EU 2020 emissions regulations.
"BMW is not only the best in class at brand management but also at technological leadership," stated Church. "We think investors will increasingly value this advancement and the consistency of margins at BMW above near-term product momentum at Daimler, which will likely come with a longer-term payback as Mercedes requires a large step-up investment to enable compliance with 2020/21 (CO2) regulations."
Audi has been making a push for BMW's number one spot by attracting young people away from Mercedes. Jesse Toprak, an analyst at Cars.com, said the idea behind Audi's new strategy appears entail attracting young consumers who haven't cemented a preference to any car brand.
While Mercedes sales have been trending up overall and has been drawing more investor attention, its core CLA class was reportedly declining across the first eight months of 2014. Michelle Krebs, an analyst at AutoTrader.com, attributes the drop in CLA sales to the emergence of Audi's A3.
"CLA was the only game in town for a while, and now there's something to compare it to," said Krebs. "If you read some of the comparison tests, the A3 is coming out on top by a long stretch."
Still at the front of the pack, BMW said its luxury vehicles have moved up 7.3 percent in June 2014 and up to 10.2 percent over the first half of 2014. It said sold 164,214 BMWs in June, 886,347 on the year and a total of 1.02 million total vehicles when accounting for it Rolls-Royce and Mini lines.
